PROJECT VON NEUMANN

A proposal to the Federation


From here to everywhere!
SUMMARY

The exploration of space represents many dangers. In the event of accident or combat a starship may be destroyed yet its crew survive - only to face tedious if not harsh survival situations awaiting rescue. In these situations, thankfully rare but nonetheless inevitable, a space fleet faces two problems. First is the serious loss of a vessel, easily enough remedied by commissioning a replacement but thereby distracting otherwise allocated shipbuilding resources. Second, planetside the marooned crew idles uselessly - down time hazardous to efficient crew performance.

Project Von Neumann intends to solve both problems while simultaneously expanding our space exploration capabilities right up to the limit imposed by our most precious resource - the starship crew. We will demonstrate the deployment of the Von Neumann Class seedshuttle , a self-replicating starship designed along the classic lines of the Constitution Class heavy cruiser (for reasons of elegance if not tradition and history).


Delivered with a skeletal but sufficient crew, the seedshuttle begins construction immediately. As less than one-half of the ship's final mass is available from initial seedshuttle cladding, longer-term consideration must be given to mining common but essential elements planetside (or from moons or other nearby bodies), but for now there's plenty to do and work must begin ...


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FAQ
"Why name the project von Neumann?"
"Any reference work?"
Interviews with the Author of the Booklet of General Ship's Plans?
Moshe Sipper's Self-Replication Page?
NASA doing nanotech?

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